Marriage

1
Marriage

• Forms and Outcomes

2
Marriage

• 9 out of 10 whites and 2 out of three African
  Americans are projected to marry eventually
• Shifts in the meaning and nature of marriage
• Institutional marriage
• Companionship Marriage
• Individualized marriage

3
Institutional Marriage

• A marriage in which the emphasis is on male
  authority, duty and conformity to social norms.
• Unifying factors tend to be external
• The law
• Public opinion
• Social mores
• tradition

4
Companionship Marriage

• 1920s to 1950s transition
• Emphasized affection, friendship, and sexual
  gratification, especially male gratification
• Still relied on a sharp division of labor in
  roles

5
The central thesis of this volume is that the
family in historical times has been, and at
present is, in transition from an institution to
a companionship. In the past the important
factors unifying the family have been external,
formal, and authoritarian, as the law, the mores,
public opinion, tradition, the authority of the
family head, rigid discipline, and elaborate
ritual. At present, in the new emerging form of
the companionship family, its unity inheres less
and less in community pressures and more and more
in such interpersonal relations as the mutual
affection, the sympathetic understanding, and the
comradeship of its members. (Burgess Locke,
1945)
6
Individualized Marriage

• Late 1960s through the 1970s a transitional
  period
• Emphasis becomes individuals own personal sense
  of fulfillment, emotional satisfaction, and
  self-development
• Changed Beliefs
• Self-development
• Roles should be flexible and negotiable
• Communication and openness essential

7
Percentage of magazine articles containing at
least one of three themes about marriage self
development, flexible and negotiable roles, and
communication and openness, 1900-1979 (Cancian,
1987)
8
How Happy?
9
Five Types of Marriage

• Vitalized
• Harmonious
• Traditional
• Conflicted
• Devitalized

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